infoTECH News

[September 04, 2014]

Problems with Back to School Online Shopping Show Room for Improvement for Holiday Season

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --(Business Wire)--

SOASTA,
the leader in cloud and mobile testing and real user monitoring, today
revealed the results of its SOASTA (News - Alert) Back to School Shopping Report Card,
which found that 84 percent of Americans who made an online purchase for
back to school experienced problems.

The survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf
of SOASTA from August 21-25, 2014 among 2,014 adults ages 18 and older.
The survey was based on SOASTA's experience of ensuring top quality
performance for 10 of the top 10 online retailers who rely on SOASTA's
mobile and web technology.

However, a majority of Americans (56 percent) said technical problems
would make them not use a smartphone or tablet for back to school
shopping. The technical problem Americans named as their biggest concern
was slow websites (40 percent), followed by:

Crashing websites - 32 percent

Websites not optimized for smartphone or tablets - 30 percent

Websites with problems during peak days and times - 25 percent

Websites that don't respond to swipes, taps, or zooms - 23 percent

Bad user interface - 22 percent

SOASTA's research found that a majority of Americans (55 percent) said
they would find using a smartphone or tablet appealing for back to
school shopping. Americans listed several reasons for this, from
comparison shopping (38 percent) to avoiding other parents they don't
lke at physical stores (five percent).

When they encountered problems, a majority of those who shopped online
for back to school (69 percent) took action, including:

Consider not using the site again - 40 percent

Go to a competitor's site - 37 percent

Tell my friend's family about the experience - 23 percent

Report the site on social media - 11 percent

Out of those who had performance problems during their online back to
school shopping, 90 percent expect these same sites to have the same
problems during the holidays and a quarter of all Americans (26 percent)
said they were not at all likely to visit a site during the holidays if
it had performance problems during back to school.

"The SOASTA Back to School Shopping Report Card should be a wake-up call
for online commerce sites that are not testing regularly," said Tom
Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. "As Americans increasingly embrace mobile to shop
online, they are seeing back to school as an important test to see if
their favorite stores are ready for the Christmas holiday shopping
season. As we saw with Healthcare.gov, it's imperative to plan ahead and
test ahead of high-anticipated volume. By properly testing their sites,
stores can make sure they are able to deliver flawless mobile and web
performance under the busiest traffic conditions."

Methodology:

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Poll
on behalf of SOASTA from August 21-25, 2014 among 2,014 adults ages 18
and older. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and
therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please
contact: William.mccormick@grayling.com.

About SOASTA:

SOASTA is the leader in cloud testing. Its web and mobile test
automation and monitoring solutions, CloudTest, TouchTest and mPulse,
enable developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test and
monitor users with unprecedented speed, scale, precision and visibility.
The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates
provisioning and execution, and analyzes real user behavior in real-time
to deliver actionable intelligence, faster. With SOASTA, companies have
confidence that their applications will perform as designed, delivering
quality user experiences every time. SOASTA's customers are many of
today's most successful brands including Avaya, American Girl, Bonobos,
Backcountry.com, Chegg, Experian, Gilt Groupe (News - Alert), Hallmark, Intuit,
Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in
Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit http://www.soasta.com.

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks
are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names
mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.

IoT Evolution World NewsKen Briodagh, IoT Evolution World Editorial Director, gives you the download on today’s top news stories from the IoT. Visit IoTEvolutionWorld.com for all the industry news you need to get informed and grow your business.

IoT Evolution World NewsKen Briodagh, IoT Evolution World Editorial Director, gives you the download on today’s top news stories from the IoT. Visit IoTEvolutionWorld.com for all the industry news you need to get informed and grow your business.

IoT Evolution World NewsKen Briodagh, IoT Evolution World Editorial Director, gives you the download on today’s top news stories from the IoT. Visit IoTEvolutionWorld.com for all the industry news you need to get informed and grow your business.Posted Wednesday, July 1, 2015

IoT Evolution World NewsKen Briodagh, IoT Evolution World Editorial Director, gives you the download on today’s top news stories from the IoT. Visit IoTEvolutionWorld.com for all the industry news you need to get informed and grow your business.